Notre Dame Cathedral, Phnom Penh: Completed in 1927. During the Cambodian Civil War it housed up to 10,000 refugees, before being dismantled by the victorious Khmer Rouge as a political statement.
(Side note: I’m not sure why the right picture is missing both spires– maybe taken at a earlier stage?)
I find this building to be a testament to a larger story that has seldom been told. While the human atrocities of the Cambodian genocide have been told quite thoroughly in western popular culture through film and literature, the political motives of the Khmer Rouge have often been reduced to "communism"
The political mission of Pol Pot and his movement took Marx’s concept of human society being malleable according to the material condition to new extremes. The Khmer Rouge believed in establishing "year zero"– a revolutionary regression back to the prosperous agrarian legacies of Angkor Wat.
By doing away with all western/foreign influence, the Khmer Rouge believed Cambodia would be transformed into an autarkist utopia. The destruction of the Phnom Phenn cathedral became a symbol of the lengths which the Khmer Rouge took to erase centuries of cultural development. The cathedral was dismantled stone-by-stone in a theatrical display of the state atheist agenda of the new regime, and was replaced by a banana plantation. By the end of the regime, all of Cambodia’s 73 churches had been destroyed– to this day, there are no cathedrals in Cambodia.
chunger2000says
Did not know about that. Thanks for sharing!
Quibblicoussays
I think it would be better to call the Khmer Rouge “vicious” rather than “victorious”. It fits what they did far better.
jewish_tricks says
(Side note: I’m not sure why the right picture is missing both spires– maybe taken at a earlier stage?)
I find this building to be a testament to a larger story that has seldom been told. While the human atrocities of the Cambodian genocide have been told quite thoroughly in western popular culture through film and literature, the political motives of the Khmer Rouge have often been reduced to "communism"
The political mission of Pol Pot and his movement took Marx’s concept of human society being malleable according to the material condition to new extremes. The Khmer Rouge believed in establishing "year zero"– a revolutionary regression back to the prosperous agrarian legacies of Angkor Wat.
By doing away with all western/foreign influence, the Khmer Rouge believed Cambodia would be transformed into an autarkist utopia. The destruction of the Phnom Phenn cathedral became a symbol of the lengths which the Khmer Rouge took to erase centuries of cultural development. The cathedral was dismantled stone-by-stone in a theatrical display of the state atheist agenda of the new regime, and was replaced by a banana plantation. By the end of the regime, all of Cambodia’s 73 churches had been destroyed– to this day, there are no cathedrals in Cambodia.
chunger2000 says
Did not know about that. Thanks for sharing!
Quibblicous says
I think it would be better to call the Khmer Rouge “vicious” rather than “victorious”. It fits what they did far better.